The petition is open to all EU resident. The goal is to replace all Windows in all public institution in Europe with a sovereign GNU/Linux.
If the petition is successful it would be a huge step forward for GNU/Linux adoption.
This is an uphill battle in the face of corporate lobbying, learned fixedness, and, let’s face it, unintuitive UX that is found in some selection of FLOSS which is often absent in proprietary counterparts: something that people who are not tech savvy (tech-indifferent?) would prefer not to put up with.
However, I think the last problem can be mitigated with the right kind of focus and funding from such initiatives.
There have been many such initiatives[0][1] over the years in different countries where they eventually lose steam and fade away.
Also, is there an operating system backed or sponsored by EU that is actively maintained, analogous to BOSS[2] and Pardus[3]?
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:State-sponsored_Linux_distributions
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_adopters
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Operating_System_Solutions
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardus_(operating_system)
E: typo
I’ve always said governments and public institutions funded by taxpayers should use FLOSS and not be beholden to private companies. Any shortcomings or unfulfilled needs in Linux and FLOSS software would quickly be dealt with once large organizations like these started using it as the default, since they could easily fund whatever features or fixes are needed for significantly less money than they pay for proprietary software (especially now that these days they’re forking over annual subscriptions), and thus they’d also have much more control over the making sure the software meets their needs.
It seems like a no-brainer to me. Maybe it wasn’t in the earlier days of Linux but not for the last decade or so.
Total proprietary capitalist hellscape
Foss: "lol, we don’t need you, we have lin-
ENTER: new global Ai standards that depend on proprietary blobs that only work on nvidia hardware and Windows.
Foss: “w-we don’t need Ai.”
PLEASE UPDATE YOUR BROWSER TO USE-
Foss: “STOP IT!”
UNSUPPORTED
WE SEE YOUR PHONE
Foss: “you wouldn’t…”
UNSUPPORTED
It’s ridiculous that governments don’t use customized Unix/Linux builds.
well that’s what this law proposition is about… Better late than never but for it to be passed a maximum of EU resident should sign that petition
Funny enough, I’m working in IT in government exclusively with Linux for the past 20 years, which shows that indeed it’s possible.
There are a few reasons I don’t believe a petition like this will change a thing though
It would definitely prove interesting
Didn’t even have to open the link to know it was red star. I’ve heard rumors of others as well.
I expect 100% already do. Its ridiculous that they’re not forced to, though
Why? I’ve worked in two companies where IT allows Linux as an option and people are constantly having issues (including me). And these are highly technical people. Two people who are not stupid managed to break their laptops by uninstalling Python 2 which Gnome depended on.
Yes that’s technically a UX issue, but there are plenty of good old bugs too, e.g. if you remove a VPN connection that a WiFi network autoconnects to then that WiFi network will entirely stop working with no error messages to speak of. Took me a long time to figure that out. Or how about the fact that 4k only works at 30fps over HDMI, but it works fine over DisplayPort or Thunderbolt3. The hardware fully supports it and it works for other people with the same OS and laptop. I never figured that out.
That’s just a taster… I almost never have issues like that on Windows or Mac.
Windows may cost more than “free” but the additional support costs for Linux are very far from free too.
Maybe something like Chromebooks makes sense if everything is in the cloud.
We exclusively use Windows on our user’s devices (over 10k devices!) and don’t have to support anything else. We end up with problems like those all the time.
- occasionally all installations become blocked no matter what means or which user, requiring reimaging to resolve.
- DisplayPort connections mysteriously failing and requiring reboots of the device and sometimes also the dock or monitor. Sometimes we even have to swap the cable out, even though the cable will continue to work in another setup just fine.
- using a different brand of dock than the ones we have at our hotelling stations and disconnecting for any length of time causes wifi to fail until reboot
- wifi at the office mysteriously stops working as you move around the building, requiring restart
None of our Linux test devices experience any of this.
Do you have 10k Linux laptops though? The places where I worked saw issues like this for a significant fraction of the dozens of Linux laptops (most people used Macs). There’s no way you could scale that issue rate to 10k machines.
Or how about the fact that 4k only works at 30fps over HDMI, but it works fine over DisplayPort or Thunderbolt3
Blame HDMI forum for that. They objected to AMD releasing open source driver for HDMI 2.0+ that lets you do higher modes like 4k60 or 5k etc due to patent reasons. DisplayPort folks on the other hand, had no objections. DP is quite a superior technology too, so if you could, use it instead of HDMI please.
I don’t think that’s the reason. It works for other people.
It’s literally the reason
So why does it work for other people with the same laptop and OS?
They’re using a proprietary driver, not the open source one
BUT HOW COME THIS THING I DONT UNDERSTAND IS HAPPENING?
That uninstalling python2 bit reminds me of stories of users deleting their system32 folder to free up disk space.
Yeah except that uninstalling Python 2 is a perfectly reasonable thing to want to do.
Since Gnome depended on it, they would have had to intentionally push past warnings to force the uninstall, assuming they’re using a distro with a dependency mapping package manager… So, no, that’s not a perfectly reasonable thing to do
they would have had to intentionally push past warnings to force the uninstall
Go and learn some basics about UX. Two different very smart people made this mistake.
IIRC there are no warnings. It will just list gnome in the list of packages to uninstall that you often get when uninstalling things, and can easily ignore.
Again to reinforce the point because many people do not understand it. Just because it was possible to avoid the issue if you were careful does not mean that it is not an issue. People make mistakes. Seatbelts exist.
No OS idiot proof. You can delete critical files on Windows as well. Next up you will be complaining registry edits break Windows. You straight up removed a dependency of the desktop.
In the future you can run software in containers so you don’t have to care. Just install distrobox and podman.
Windows will actually stop you from deleting
Program Files.Nobody is asking for idiot-proof, just mistake-resistant. It’s ok, most people don’t understand this point.
Not if an essential part of the OS depends on it (your “UI”)
Which the package manager would have warned them about.
Meaning they deleted it manually instead of using the package manager OR just ignored all warnings and forced the uninstall.
These were too intelligent but too dumb for their own good user errors lmao.
Bloat
In an enterprise imaged Windows laptop they and you probably wouldn’t have superuser privileges in order to keep yourselves from doing stuff like deleting core Windows dependencies. Maybe they give you full administrative access at your company but if you deleted the Program Files folder to save time you’d be blamed by pretty much everyone.
You guys obviously have root privileges or else you wouldn’t have been able to delete the system’s core Python2 installation. And frankly you must have literally manually deleted it because the package manager would have told you what havoc you were about to enact and made you tell it to do it anyway.
But what’s even weird to me is that most python devs I know, including myself use python virtual environments (venv) to use different versions and package bloat control from something like pip but keep it all nice and neat.
If you wanted python3 to be the default you have to change the PATH in Windows or if you don’t know what you are doing I guess reinstall whichever python with a .MSI an hope it does it for you.
Meanwhile, in Linux you can just use the alternatives utility to literally pick your preferred versions and it takes care of the paths for you.
And with the HDMI issue? You must not be using the same graphics drivers and someone is using proprietary graphics drivers (won’t have the issues you’ve described) and the other is using open source versions (you’ll have the issues you’ve described) because companies are shitty about their proprietary closed standards.
Which brings up another point. You say you all use the same laptop model and OS but you don’t all use the same drivers? There’s no baseline? There’s no control?
This sounds like a Hell of your own making. This is why users in general should never have full administrative privileges and they should be tailored down to just what you need. Epecially if they haven’t yet learned the basics of the OS they are using because they are at best a danger to themselves and at worst a vulnerable laptop inside the network.
Why?
It makes no sense for a government/military to use a proprietary system made in another country when there’s a very strong movement inside of said government for an open system. They have incredibly smart people at SUSE, Manjaro and KDE right on the inside and you are telling me they can’t do better than hitting subscribe on Office365?
Assume the EU and US have a conflict, now the EU is stuck with an entire ecosystem made in the US. Assuming they don’t already have all your internal data, they can just get it with a single click.
They could have opted to build and use the eurofighter but didn’t, instead choosing to rely on the expertise and good relationships between EU and US. At that time.
you are telling me they can’t do better than hitting subscribe on Office365?
Yes I am absolutely telling you that.
Assuming they don’t already have all your internal data
A devotee of Our Lady of Assumption, i see.
If you were having issues why did you stay on Linux? It sounds like you were constantly fighting it. It is best not to waste work time trying something new.
Because my current company is too cheap to buy Macs, and the project I work on is full of Docker and bash scripts and obscure EDA tools. Would be a nightmare on Windows. WSL is a possibility I suppose.
PSA: You can support this petition even if you’re not an EU resident
Is that So? How?
I just signed it, but I’m in eu
It lets you sign up as a country outside the EU and sign it
shame the form is absolute dogshit, only options for title is mr. and mrs. and they want a username for some reason?
Adopting Linux is the best way to help ensure European sovereignty from maga meddling.
If they can keep the MS lobbyists out, it’s feasible, just ask Munich.
Except they couldn’t keep the Micro$oft
criminalslobbyists out
I like and support the idea in general, but the petition’s scope is just too broad and lacks focus. Migrating to Linux? Sure, but let’s not force a single distribution across the EU. New EU mobile OS? Nice idea, but there is no solid alternative unless a lot of time and money is spent on developing it.
I mean I’d be fine with BSD too. the point should be to force public institutions to use FOSS
FreeBSD is fine for servers I guess, but due that most server administrators know Linux better than any BSD, it’s probably not going to be used much. BSD’s also seem to be severely underfunded and the future of them seem vague.
Sure but nobody is petitioning for BSD desktops in the EU
Sigh. Guess I’ll have to do it
That would be incredibly dumb. There are entire fields where the FOSS is just hilariously behind proprietary software (or sometimes the only option). Do you want to cripple public institutions by cutting them off entirely from proprietary software?
Right now public institutions are paying for proprietary software. If they would invest the same money into FOSS, the FOSS option would not be behind proprietary software for long.
I think the point is to invest the money into the continued development and improvement of the foss software instead of giving the money to businesses who shield their proprietary codebase. In theory.
Switzerland already did it. Its brilliant. Instead of the gov pouring money into proprietary solutions to meet their needs, they can fund FOSS and benefit from the same software being funded by other governments and companies too.
Proprietary is crippling. Its only chosen due to corruption
“There are entire fields where the FOSS is just hilariously behind proprietary software”
- “hilariously”?
- Examples?
CAD, CAM, EDA, audio/video production (NLVEs, DAWs, synthesisers etc.).
There are open source options sometimes, but they are all faaar behind the commercial options. No fiscally sane business or government department would use them (unless they only need a small job, or are quite masochistic).
Based.
My main worry with Linux becoming more popular is that it will be attacked with more malware and viruses. I wouldn’t mind though if Linux programmers could come up with better protection.
Linux is already what a decent chunk of servers run, so I don’t really see it increasing malware.
The insecure parts of Linux is mostly on the DE side opposed to the core OS part that servers use. We absolutely will see more vulnerabilities in the future as Linux grows.
Many developments over the last few years have been for improving those aspects, e.g. Wayland is far more secure than X11 could ever be. There will be more vulnerabilities found, but it won’t be as bad as one might fear.
Flatpak too, they could force more filesystem restrictions tho, line Android apps
What vulnerabilities are you talking about? Linux is pretty solid especially with wayland and flatpaks.
Throw in some other tools like mandatory access controls and you are set
Well, servers don’t generally run Thunderbird and Firefox
Most of the Windows malware gets deployed by some user downloading and executing random files they downloaded on the web. Since installing applications on Linux is usually done through some centralized package manager or app store (Flathub), it almost entirely eliminates this attack vector. Running random scripts from the internet by downloading them using
curland piping them intosudo bashis a whole nother issue though. Noob-friendly distros like Ubuntu should IMO have some safeguards in place to block these actions.Since installing applications on Linux is usually done through some centralized package manager or app store (Flathub), it almost entirely eliminates this attack vector.
xz moment.
Yes, I see that weasel word “almost” in that sentence. I expect it’s going to be doing increasingly heavy lifting as Linux becomes a more lucrative target to attack over time.
Your point generally stands, though. Even if they’re fallible, at least someone is vetting it at all somewhere in this pipeline.
They have, snaps
Linux is a lot easier to secure
Linux-based OSes are less uniform than Windows. They could and probably will be targeted, but exploits won’t spread because of how many verities they are and how different and incompatible they can be. Some, for example, don’t even use the GNU utils and userland.
This petition is for developing something dubbed “EU-Linux”, so if implemented as is will be pretty uniform
That is mostly false. Most of the code that faces the network is the same. As is most of the background running code. Linux is still more secure.
Double edged sword. Forced adoption of a shitty distro, or a really locked down/limited system might not be a step forward at all.
From memory, Germany did this many years ago, and ended up rolling it back?
a really locked down/limited system might not be a step forward at all
Depends what you mean. Locked down as in hidden from the public (I don’t think that’s legal anyways because of the GPL) would be bad. But locked down/limited from employees so that they can’t bork the system is good, imo.
The latter, and it is good from an organisational perspective, but its never a nice experience, and for many, this will be their first real experience with a Linux.
Right now Linux is “That nerd OS”, if this goes badly, for millions it could change to “That OS they forced on us at work, where I can’t XYZ”
Edit: on the GPL front, GPL doesn’t require that you publish your code to everyone, just to the recipients of your binaries. And you only have to give it upon request. So they definitely could keep it somewhat under wraps if they wanted to. If they are smart, they’ll follow the Munich model and stick to upstreaming any changes they make.
Edit: on the GPL front, GPL doesn’t require that you publish your code to everyone, just to the recipients of your binaries. And you only have to give it upon request. So they definitely could keep it somewhat under wraps if they wanted to.
When I said “hidden from the public”, I was meaning refusing to disclose the source code even when asked. I do wonder how the laws would apply to government organizations violating copyright 🤔. Like what if it was the OS for some defense system? I’m not sure a government would be too keen on disclosing that — even if it was requested though some sort of freedom of information request (if the respective country has that) — and would rather classify it and refuse to disclose regardless of the license. I’m not aware of any precedent of this.
Only the end-users would have rights to the source under GPL, and its unlikely that someone is going to risk their job by releasing the code.
I’m not sure how FOI would work, but I dont think they just automatically get approved.
I still expect it to be done in the open, one of the things Munich got right was upstreaming all their changes, which meant that even when it was cancelled, nothing was lost. Maintaining out of tree changes is just way to much work
I still expect it to be done in the open, one of the things Munich got right was upstreaming all their changes, which meant that even when it was cancelled, nothing was lost. Maintaining out of tree changes is just way to much work
Would you be able to cite a source for this Munich program? I’d like to read more about it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
Not a lot of sources, I did find a blog post from a 3rd party contractor who did some work to get stuff upstreamed, but I cant find it right now
Only the end-users would have rights to the source under GPL, and its unlikely that someone is going to risk their job by releasing the code.
Fair point. So I suppose that would be the employees using the distribution rather than the entire populace.
[…] but its never a nice experience […]
Why’s that?
Properly locking down a machine just heavily restricts what you can do with it, to the point that normal things that you or I do day-to-day on our own PCs become impossible. Every time you hit a restriction its very frustrating.
I am drawing from my experience as a developer, so it might be worse for me, but I’ve also heard accountants in the office complaining of similar gripes with their locked down windows systems.
Hm, but I’m not sure people would attribute that to the design of the underlying OS itself rather than just the employer. Like do those people with restrictions on Windows blame Microsoft? It’d be the same as someone blaming the Linux maintainers for employer placed restrictions on an OS running Linux. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure someone would still do that, but I’m not convinced that the majority would think that way — I think most people would be able to make the distinction.
Yeah, I could be wrong, maybe the blame will be attributed correctly, maybe not.
At least with Windows, most people know what its normally like at home, but thats less true for Linux.
At least with Windows, most people know what its normally like at home, but thats less true for Linux.
Yeah, that’s a fair point that they wouldn’t have a comparison, so they wouldn’t know if it’s always like that. One could perhaps make an educated guess, depending on circumstance, but, without any first-hand experience or exposure, it would be just that: a guess.
Nope, not Germany. The city of Munich, and it was rolled back because a politician took Microsoft bribes and drank the Microsoft snake oil.
Apparently they are back on the Linux train as of 2020, so thats good news.
Until the next corrupt politician… but yeah, let’s hope Linux stays, this time around.
If it’s done EU wide, it’ll take a lot more than a corrupt politician to reverse it
yes. about three fiddy…
I don’t know if I can spare that much… Wait a second! Nessy, when did you get a Lemmy account?!
National governments should be harder to bribe than local ones, at least. Also harder to get them to adopt it in the first place though.
Should be, but I am afraid that our system encourages corrupt people to seek positions of power.
The 30,000 employees of Schleswig-Holstein’s local government will be moving to Linux and LibreOffice as the state pushes for what it calls “digital sovereignty,” a reference to non-EU companies not gathering troves of user data so European firms can compete with these foreign rivals.
Munich, the capital of German state Bavaria, switched from Windows to Linux-based LiMux in 2004, though it switched back in 2017 as part of an IT overhaul. Wanting Microsoft to move its headquarters to Munich likely played a part in returning to Windows, too.
Then they went back to Linux a few years pater
Yeah, that’s the one. Gnome 2 in 2017 would have felt pretty dated. And the political reasons can’t have helped either.
So, it didn’t fail from a technical fault but a political one? I feel like you’re arguing against it but I’m not following how that has anything to do with the viability of it (especially if it worked for 13 years)
Its not that I’m against it or don’t think it can work, I just dont think its going to help drive adoption of desktop Linux. And I think there is a very real risk that it could negatively impact Linux mind share if the experience is particularly bad.
The Munich OS proves its possible. But I’m really curious about how the end users actually felt about it. Maybe I’m wrong and they love it, but I’m very skeptical.
Fwiw, I suspect the “Linux” that ends up being deployed will likely be a glorified thinclient/browser, and nothing like desktop Linux as most of us know and love.
That’s fair
From memory, Germany did this many years ago, and ended up rolling it back?
The city of Munich deployed their own custom Linux systems many years ago. But since it wasn’t really maintained and updated, the user experience was pretty bad and the city’s employees were unhappy. Then Micro$oft lobbyists also came in and made them switch - by threatening to move their German headquarters out of Munich, which would cost the city lots of tax revenue.
You think that Microsoft lobbyist would have had any traction if the user experience was any decent?
Of course not. They wouldn’t have had any reason to switch.
That is the biggest issue with Linux at the moment. It takes more maintenance than Windows. And there are a lot less people with the knowledge to setup and maintain those environments.
At the end of the day, the point of those environments is to allow the user to work in them. But if the user is unable to work properly because of the environment, then that environment must be changed. It is as simple as that.
Of course not. They wouldn’t have had any reason to switch.
Of course they would? Millions of euros of tax revenue sounds like a pretty compelling reason to me. This is why Micro$oft’s “lobby efforts” should be labeled as what they are: Nothing more and nothing less than corruption.
It takes more maintenance than Windows.
If you create your own distro, yes. But there are countless noob-friendly distros like Mint, Ubuntu and Fedora that they could use with practically 0 maintenance required. Also, compare the 2004 desktop Linux experience to now. Having used Gentoo Linux compiled from a stage 1 tarball back in 2002, I can tell you: the differences are tremendous. Many of the issues they had can be directly attributed to OpenOffice and it’s bad compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats, which has long been replaced by LibreOffice. It still worked out pretty well for them, over a period of 13 years. And it saved the tax payer millions of euros of Microsoft’s stupid licensing fee for their crappy proprietary garbage.
No, it isn’t a double edged sword. Even a mediocre distro would be better than Windows, any distro would be cheaper than Windows, and there’s no reason to choose a bad distro anyway.
No one wants to choose a bad OS environment, it will become one due to security or other non-negotiable requirements.
They aren’t going to just toss Ubuntu on a box and call it done. Itll be locked down, limited, and horrible to use. And users who dont know any better will blame “Linux”.
A government SOE Linux just isnt going to be a good ambassador for general desktop usage.
You mean just like Windows?
Just like windows, except that the misdirected hate when the SOE environment gets in the way will be aimed at “Linux” instead of “Microsoft”.
No, but it will mean apps get written for Linux, due to market share
Maybe. I suspect most of the government apps will be webapps, and not particularly relevant to the rest of us.
Maybe Firefox will get some funding :D
So they can blow it on functions they cancel :)
if you read the petition, it’s not for a security reason that it has been created but RGPD one… So with privacy in mind, it can be a not great but good distro
afaik Bayern rolled back to Windows after some Microsoft “lobbying”
Precisely the city of Munich had its LiMux system.
Government systems should be locked down and limited.
Yup, exactly, which is kinda my point. The OS given to users is gonna be heavily restricted, so no one is going to use it and then run home to install it on a home PC. Government OSs are just not good ambassadors.
No one was discussing users transitioning on their home computers.
Of course not, but if the first exposure someone has to Linux is a bad experience, thats not going to be good for mind share. Thats the double edge sword i am referring to.
Solution: don’t ship a shitty distro. This is the sort of issue that actual IT professionals need final say in. Not the MBAs. Not the politicals. The people who actually know what they’re doing. Additionally, years ago Linux was in a much different place. It’s really matured into something more suitable for both the average end user as well as professional adoption.
That argument would be fine, if only the Linux community could actually agree on what is a good distro.
Personally, I think it depends on the sitch. Something immutable would probably be the better go for people coming from Windows and would help with IT costs since all systems would be, at their base, the same. No one is going to accidentally install something that breaks their system. And the main drawback of immutability (less control over the system) wouldn’t be a problem because people shouldn’t be installing things on government systems that are outside the scope of their job.
EDIT: In a sentence: a good distro is one that’s good for your organization.
Basically everyone in the community agrees that Mint, Ubuntu and Fedora are the best choices for new users. Mint and Ubuntu are pretty similar, so they don’t require separate maintenance effort, and supporting Fedora is not that hard, if you already support RHEL, CentOS or another rpm-based distro (which are pretty common in the enterprise space). For all the desktop applications, Flatpak exists and is agreed on as the standard format by most of the desktop Linux community.
Thats the problem though, there are near infinite ways for someone along the way to completely fuck it up, and very few ways to get it right. And security concerns are almost always going to make the distro worse for the users.
And even if it was left to IT professionals, they are just as capable of making it a mess on their own.
We could say that about every single general decision that anyone in the world has ever made. It’s a truism which tells us almost nothing about this situation.
IT professionals only get a say when the C-suite accepts that IT is a necessity, not a burden. This is extremely uncommon.
Working in enterprise IT sucks. I’ve had jobs where we had to have CFO approval to buy a bag of zipties (the request was denied, BTW)
They then switched back to Linux
Linux isn’t a platform but rather a general ecosystem. The hard part is making a base system that means the requirements and is rock solid.
Maybe it’s too early in the morning, anyone got a link, I couldn’t find any?
The post does contain the link to the petition, anyway it’s this one: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/petitions/it/petition/content/0729%252F2024/html/Petition-No-0729%252F2024-by-N.-W.-%2528Austrian%2529-on-the-implementation-of-an-EU-Linux-operating-system-in-public-administrations-across-all-EU-countries
This was helpfull but Its in Italian so here is the English version LINK
This is a link sharing platform. All posts are supposed to have a link to a news article. Its at the top.
dunno how many online petitions actually worked, but “kay guys… now… linux!” ain’t gonna work.
That’s a parliament petition. If it succeed it is forced by EU constitution to be turned into an EU law.
That tool is offered to EU representant to create a kind of referendum and accelerate the adoption of a law through direct democracy.
I think you’re a bit mistaken. Per https://www.edf-feph.org/enforcement-toolkit-european-parliament-peti-committee/
“The Petitions Committee does not have investigatory nor enforcement powers and it can only adopt non-binding recommendations. Nevertheless, it can be a good tool to draw political attention to specific matters.”
At most, it makes the parliament have to look at the proposal and decide if its worth looking into or not. It doesn’t force anything.
Unless I’m looking at the wrong kind of petition to the EU Parliament?
Why creating a new distro instead of using a big one and contribute to it?
They aren’t building something from scratch. They probably are just going to make a base image with everything configured in a standard way.
Governments tend to have security standards that differ from most solutions readily available. Not saying this is the case, but it’s a possibility.
